‘Why do you speak such a queer language, Akkayya?’ my grandmother asked comfortingly.
‘No, sister, no. I have given you so much trouble, such sinner’s trouble. Will you always remember me, me your elder sister?’
‘Surely! And respect you as ever. . ’ From my grandmother’s voice I knew she had melted into tears.
‘When I am dead, sister,’ continued Akkayya, ‘be sure to write to Nanjunda, Ramanna and Mari, and tell them their sister died with their names upon her lips.’ She too seemed to weep. ‘Tell them I am their elder sister — and though they never once did give me as much as a sari, tell them I love them all. . ’
‘Amma, amma,’ wept my grandmother and — God knows what made her say that — she whispered, ‘Akkayya, little Kittu is here. . ’
‘Kittu. . Kittu. . my darling Kittu. . my son, my child, Kittu!’ she cried madly. I trembled and gasped for breath. Would I go? Would I? But her words rang in my ears like bells of the temple. ‘Kittu. . Kittu. . my son, come, come!’ Unconsciously I was up and was walking towards Akkayya’s room. The two children followed me. Even at the door a foul stench breathed on me. I entered.
Akkayya lay there, her eyes white, her face pouchy and husk-like, and she looked at me — a true image of death. Then suddenly she turned towards the wall and cried out: ‘Kittu. . Kittu. .’ like a frightened animal.
Naga bent down and covered her parched thighs. . And I wept.
One evening when I came home — some four years later— everybody looked annoyed and uneasy. I wondered what it was. They asked me to remove my outer garments and go into the hall. I knew somebody had died. My sister? Uncle Shama? Cousin Susheela? Who? Who? Undressed, I went into the hall, trembling. My stepmother had already bathed beneath the tap, and the water was being boiled in the bathroom for all of us.
‘Akkayya is dead,’ said my father irritably and in utter disgust.
‘When?’ I gasped.
‘The day before yesterday,’ said my stepmother. I sat like all of them, waiting to have my bath; but I assure you my soul was in true distress. ‘Akkayya. . Akkayya. .’ I said to myself like one who calls a beloved soul, ‘Akkayya. . ’
I heard my stepmother say: ‘Could they not have had the sense to hide it from us for the six months? What a nuisance!’
‘Idiots!’ howled my father.
‘Perfect idiots,’ spat my stepmother.
‘Who is Akkayya?’ asked my little sister.
‘A grandmother whom you have never seen, and thank heavens you will never see,’ said my stepmother and walked away into the kitchen.
We duly bathed, changed our clothing, and after dinner we went to the cinema.
I think, between the three brothers of my grandmother, my father, and a cousin of ours, none of them wanted to take the responsibility of performing Akkayya’s obsequies. At last one of her brothers called a Brahmin, and giving him a few rupees, asked him to perform the ‘necessary’ ceremonies. I do not know whether the Brahmin did it. Anyway, here I have written the story of Akkayya, maybe her only funeral ceremony.
THE LITTLE GRAM SHOP
Everybody hated him, hated him. ‘That swine of a Bania,’ they would say, spitting and thumping on the floor, ‘that son of a prostitute, he’ll soon eat mire and vomit blood. Oh! you son of a donkey!’ They would spit again, draw a puff from the tip of the hookah and continue swearing and blustering. It was hardly a week since Ananda’s family had moved to the Cornerhouse, and already he had heard a great deal about ‘Bania Motilal’. Narasimha, his class-fellow, hated him and had always curses upon his lips whenever he passed by Motilal’s gram shop. One day, as Ananda was in no hurry, he slipped into Narasimha’s house to have a little chat. Narasimha was furious. That Bania had called him a dog, and had spat on him!
‘Why?’ asked Ananda, curious.
‘Why? What will a dog do but bite?’
‘I don’t understand,’ the other managed to mutter.
‘You don’t! Then you do not know the story?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll tell you!’ cried Narasimha, triumphant, and this is what he told him.
That Motilal, the wretched Bania, was poor as a cur— poor as a cur in a pariah street. A copper pot in his hand, with nothing to wear except the rags they had on them, he and his wife Beti Bai started from their little village in Gujarat, when? nobody knows, but it must have been some fifteen, twenty or forty years ago. They tramped from village to village, singing and begging, eating the food they got, and knotting in the doles they received. And within a year or two they had actually managed to save a hundred rupees, yes, ten times ten, a hundred rupees. Now with that sum in hand, they had only to find a town to settle down in. His wife, poor Beti Bai, was greatly worn out by this errant life, and she swore she would go no further than Badepur. But Motilal was ambitious. What? A great-grandson of Bhata Tata Lal of Khodi to settle down in a dirty hole like Badepur! Never! It was true, misfortune on misfortune had pulled them down. But they had to rise up again. They had to become great and rich like Bhata Tata Lal of Khodi. It pleased Beti to be the wife of the great-grandson of so great a man. And she would do anything to be great like that famous ancestor of her husband. Herself poor — so poor that she drank water out of the street gutters, added Narasimha— herself poor, with a widowed mother who did manual work in a Bania’s house, Beti Bai had grown ambitious too with the stories that Motilal told her about his great-grandfather. ‘What do you think,’ he had assured her once, in the serai of Badepur when she was sick and unwilling to go any further, ‘what do you think, Beti? Bhata Tata Lal had a house as big. . no, about as big as this town. He had over a hundred servants, and a byre that contained at least a thousand cattle. Oh! If only these dirty Red-men had not come, he would have been prosperous, rich like the Maharaja of Bhavan. Beti, we too shall be rich like that. . some day. . one day. . ’
‘But you said,’ objected Beti Bai, ‘but you said it was your grandfather who wasted it all.’
‘Yes, Beti. My grandfather had ten concubines and he squandered his property among them, among all the ten of them. And the little that remained, my father wasted it on his own mistresses.’
‘And the Red-man. . ’
‘Yes, the Red-man! Concubines and the Red-man. It is they together that plundered my great-grandfather’s splendid treasury. Oh! I wish I had been born then! To be born as I was, between cotton sacks on one side and the cattle on the other. . in such unbecoming poverty. . Oh! Beti! What a life for the great-grandson of Bhata Tata Lal of Khodi!’
He had tears in his eyes.
‘No, no, do not weep, brother. As you say we will go far, far, as far as you like. . to Hyderpur. You say there one can become rich in the twinkling of an eye. Well then, I’ll go with you, I will.’
‘What an angel for a wife!’ beamed Motilal, ‘how blessed! We shall go to Hyderpur and become rich in a day, fabulously rich in the twinkling of an eye. And when we go back to our own town they will treat us like veritable gods. They will say, ‘Look! look at them, sister, look at Bhata Motilal! His father died before he was born and his mother died but two months after he saw light, and yet look how rich he has become! The gods have helped him, surely. He lived, sister, like a sacred bull of the street which wanders far and wild and eats whatever it finds. He lived by begging, and now he is rich, so wealthy.’ They will envy and fear me, Beti.’ Beti could not help weeping. She was so subdued to happiness.
‘Yes! When we go and tell Mother we are wealthy, how splendid it all will be! She shall toil no more. And she shall live with us.’
‘We shall see. . ’ Motilal looked towards the town, which was sinking away into the vast darkness. Here and there a light shone, and he lay down beside Beti and slept.